Astronaut Chris Hadfield's 'space oddity' lessons make him a leader for today

Chris Hadfield's outer space video clip for a David Bowie cover, which garnered 35 million views in record time, demonstrated his savvy for commercial cut-through.

by
Andrew Masterson

David Bowie was lionised in life, and is mythologised in death. His song Space Oddity runs like a golden thread through post-1960s popular culture.

And yet.

"Bowie wrote that song when he was 19, and it was before the very first people had walked on the moon, so he had no idea," says retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.

"So he was guessing, and in fact he got a lot of it wrong."

These days, if you're going to criticise the most influential voice in modern music since Lennon and McCartney, you'd better make sure your argument is watertight. Or, in this case, airtight. Already prominent and respected in space exploration circles, Hadfield shot to global fame in 2013 when he recorded his own version of Space Oddity – with Bowie's permission – while floating in the tin can known as the International Space Station (ISS).

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He made the recording on his last day on the ISS, having handed over command of the spacecraft the day before. It was the end of his third trip into space. One month later he announced his retirement.

The video clip for the Bowie cover garnered 35 million views in a very short period of time. Together with a series of amusing life-in-space social media vignettes, the clip ensured that Hadfield – now 57 – transitioned very smoothly from a career as an astronaut to another as a media personality. These days he does well on the motivational speaker circuit, has written three best-selling books, makes television programs for the BBC, has recorded albums of songs (at least one landing in the upper reaches of the Canadian charts) and performed in all sorts of interesting places.

Impressive credentials

So, if Chris Hadfield wants to critique David Bowie, he can. The man has two schools, an airport, an asteroid, and a goddam fighter squadron named after him. Say what you like about him, but you have to concede he's got balls the size of Sputnik.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield made three trips into space and is now in demand worldwide as a leadership speaker.
NASA

And the Russian reference is especially apt. At least since the end of the Cold War, collaboration between nations in the field of space research has been close and collegiate. Hadfield has flown on Russian Soyuz craft, and played an important role in building not only the ISS, but also its predecessor, the Russian-owned space station, Mir.

And here's something no one else alive or dead has ever been able to say: Hadfield built part of the Russian station – in situ – using a penknife.

"It was the first time we'd ever built a space station by transporting material on a NASA Space Shuttle," he said. "We'd brought up a big Russian-built connecting tunnel, 15 feet long, a docking module. When we docked and attached it to Mir, we found that some great big strong Russian technician had strapped it all down with wires and cables and straps.

"We were there. We were docked. We were equalising pressure. My job was to open the hatch, but when I tried it was completely covered by all this safety strapping.

Hadfield, red stripes on suit's legs, works on the backup power supply to a robotic arm on the International Space Station during a televised spacewalk in 2001.
NASA/AP

"I thought, what do I do? I had in my pocket a Swiss army knife so I pulled it out and used the little saw feature, then clipped bits away with the tiny scissors.

"At one point I realised just how ludicrous it was. I turned around to the camera we had set up, let the knife float in front of me, and smiled. The folks in Switzerland, at Victorinox, they just loved that."

In demand

You bet they did. Penknives in space! It's marketing gold. One thing about Commander Hadfield: from Bowie to books, he has a damn fine eye for commercial cut-through. This is one of the reasons why he's so in demand as a speaker. When he shares his stories and insights, he finds resonance in an audience much bigger than the smallish community of space nerds.

Hadfield recorded a version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on his final day in the International Space Station.
AP

Just about to tour Australia, hitting Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, the publicity makes it clear that he's going to talk about "leadership, teamwork, [and] collaboration" ahead of science and technology.

He is keen to share the lessons he's learned through his career about putting together groups of people he can trust in situations – inside a thin metal tube 400km above the Earth, for instance – where mistakes can easily be fatal.

It's a subject that could conceivably prompt him to grab his guitar and offer up another cover version, this time of Skyhooks' 1975 hit, Ego Is Not A Dirty Word.

"I think sometimes ego is viewed in a negative way," he says, "but one important facet of ego is confidence. I don't want to fly in space with someone who lacks confidence in their abilities, because their abilities are going to be absolutely necessary to keep us all alive.

Hadfield played an important part in building the Russian-owned space station, Mir.
NASA TV

"And so you want to build a team of people who have not only the raw materials but also the years of training and development, and then the practical experience, to give them the confidence to make decisions in an irreversibly consequential situation."

That terminology speaks volumes, and explains something of Hadfield's appeal to business folk. There are very few managerial situations on Earth where the wrong decision could result in an "irreversibly consequential situation". No CEO, whatever the nature of the enterprise she or he commands, has ever had to contemplate being sucked out a door and lost in the suffocating void of space, much less hurtling to the ground in a ball of flames.

Many, however, fondly imagine that in such a situation they could keep calm and make the right decisions. (They couldn't. No one names a fighter squadron after a person whose peak achievement is delivering a half-yearly pre-tax profit.)

'Temper-filled discussions'

"I was an astronaut for 21 years and flew on three different space flights, and we had plenty of temper-filled discussions about how to do things, and battling it out," Hadfield observed.

"But never did we have emotionally-driven arguments, or what in the vernacular you might call a pissing contest. Because that's not why were there; we were there for something beyond that."

Before becoming an astronaut, Hadfield enjoyed a first career of 24 years in the Canadian military. During that time, he said, he got to observe an awful lot of leaders, many of them bad. From this, he learnt to develop his own leadership strategies, and apply them in extreme situations.

The months spent in space are critical, of course, but the years spent beforehand building a team, working on collaboration, are even more important.

Hadfield has recorded albums of songs since ending his days as an astronaut.

"We came back from space having set records for the amount of science accomplished on board the space station," he said.

"We didn't hurt one person. We left the space station in far better shape than it was when we got there. And when we landed – when our Soyuz thudded down and rolled to a stop – every single one of us wanted to get out, run around to the back of the line, and go do it again."

Instead, of course, at length, he decided it was time to hang up his space suit and hit the road. Noticing that Planet Earth was blue, he decided there was plenty he could do, and so, to reference another Bowie classic, Hadfield played guitar.

Chris Hadfield is appearing in Brisbane, August 22, Great Hall, Brisbane Convention Centre; Sydney, August 24, at the State Theatre and Melbourne, August 25, Palais Theatre. See: lateralevents.com